Highlighting the development and growth of a 3,000 sq. ft. rooftop production garden in the Historic Walker's Point neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI, this blog offers tools and resources on sustainable urban agriculture. We welcome questions, comments and suggestions as we embark on the largest rooftop production garden in the Cream City.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Garden Plan 2013

Before starting this post, I looked back at the Garden Planning 101 post from last March and couldn't help but smirk at the picture of the garden layout I had created for last year's rooftop garden. The actual plan turned out MUCH differently!

Not only did many of the initial plants keel over from high winds, but being the first year of our garden we ended up planting most of our items based on donated plants we received - so I couldn't really choose what we were planting. This year, I still received a LARGE seed donation from Seed Savers Exchange, but did so before planning out the garden. So I was able to more realistically estimate spacing and plant capacity, while ensuring that I included the seeds we actually had!

We are still looking for more donations, so please contact me if you are able to support us with a few more seed packets, seed starting soil mix, or planting mix.

I am excited to announce that we will also be expanding our planting area this year. In addition to the original four planting beds we are also going to be planting in the L-shaped garden bed on the east end of the garden. Last year, this bed was home to grasses and other water-catching plants; but many did not survive the first year, so we will be using that space to increase our vegetable/herb production. Also, we will be utilizing the remaining earth box planters which we recycled from Future Green in 2011. These will be reserved mainly for the Children's Gardens - including a salad garden, square foot mini-garden, pizza garden, and some culture-specific gardens for the World Lunchbox curriculum.